Wordle 295 3/6

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Wordle 294 5/6

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We cut the cord late last year, so we’re seeing how long we can go without NBC Sports Chicago (which carries White Sox games locally) before we cave and subscribe to a service like YouTube TV that carries it. Right now I’m having serious withdrawal.

Wordle 293 4/6

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Wordle 292 4/6

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Pleasantly surprised to see three or four Padres fans on this Spin list of 108 musicians predicting the 2022 baseball season. Still too many Dodger followers, though. And it’s sorely lacking Geddy Lee talking about his Blue Jays.

Theologian Greg Hillis tells MLB: “Quit Trying to ‘Fix’ Baseball” (Commonweal).

Don’t run from baseball’s leisurely pace. Embrace it. Teach about it. Market it. … No matter how distracted we are, we know intuitively that there are deep patterns within us and without us, and that happiness is in some way connected to our discovery and contemplation of them.

Hillis’s essay is prompting me to give Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture another spin.

Wordle 291 4/6

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Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post: “… there is nothing on the list of pandemic school ‘lessons’ that we didn’t already know before covid-19 — and for a long, long time.”

Random finding: “Rare footage discovered of Prince, 11, at 1970 Minneapolis teachers’ strike” (Guardian)

Work around the clock: Not quite as bad as it sounds, but still

Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic:

I’ve noticed a new island of work at the end of the day. Sometime around 9 p.m., I’ll open my computer and see that I have about a dozen urgent-ish emails and Slack messages. So, while in front of the television or with a podcast playing in the background, I’ll spend a late-night hour or more replying to these messages, typing the same intro over and over: ‘Sorry for the delay …’ ‘Oops, I missed this …’ ‘Hey, just seeing that you …’

I can relate. In fact, I’ll probably be online like this tonight after F and C go to bed to catch up on work; I have an appointment this afternoon, so I’ll play catchup if needed later.

Most meetings, I believe, are useless time sucks spawned directly from Satan’s Outlook calendar. Fortunately, I am less prone to meetings than some of my colleagues, though I am stuck with my share. Others, unfortunately, aren’t so lucky:

‘People have 250 percent more meetings every day than they did before the pandemic,’ says Mary Czerwinski, the research manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy group at Microsoft. ‘That means everything else—like coding and email and writing—is being pushed later.’ Workday creep and meeting creep aren’t two separate trends; they’re the same trend.

(In other news, there’s a “Human Understanding and Empathy” group at Microsoft. Who knew?)

I’m grateful to have a job with this kind of flexibility. But I can’t help but feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of being “at work” around the clock.

Thank God I work late less than I used to, and only if it means I’m able to take care of important errands or spend time with family. But it requires a lot of restraint of my workaholic tendencies, which fortunately have dissipated with age and a growing sense of knowing better.

Nothing says “the Midwest” like monthly tornado siren testing.

Wordle 290 4/6

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Back to work today. Wish F and I were still in St. Louis, strung out on frozen custard and Provel cheese.

Wordle 289 5/6

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Took F and one of her best friends to see “Princess Mononoke” at a local theater and then Starbucks afterward. Not surprised to learn more about Frannie’s middle school life in one afternoon than I have in 3 years of asking her “How was school today?” every weekday.

Getting tired of these close calls.

Wordle 288 6/6

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Blessed Mother FTW!

Yeah, I know, the war isn’t over, and the Russians still are rooting around other parts of the country. But you can’t tell me that Moscow backing off Kyiv barely a week after the consecration of Ukraine and Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart is a coincidence.

Wordle 287 4/6

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We got dessert at St. Louis’ oldest frozen custard stand. I went over my carb limit again with a “Crater”: vanilla frozen custard, hot fudge, devil’s food cake, whipped cream, and evil. (I also walked 10,000+ steps at the zoo.) Will be better about the carbs starting tomorrow.

Today’s nutrition rundown—before the frozen custard we got at Ted Drewes after dinner. Not only did I fall off the wagon; the wagon ran over me repeatedly.

The zoo and other side trips during our St. Louis stay got me to a record today.

This one pissed me off, honestly.

Wordle 286 6/6

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Pretty much off the carb wagon for this girls’ spring break weekend. Almost 70 grams over my 100-gram daily carb limit today. Not fazed. Will get back on the wagon soon.

Grateful for a short work week so I can road trip to St. Louis with my kid for spring break.

Checked in to our hotel after the 4.5-hour drive. Now able to relax and watch old YouTube clips of Warren Beatty on Letterman promoting Big Ass Ham.